Politics aside, this has to be one of the most interesting weeks in a long time when it comes to unique airplanes in United States airspace. While I wrote about the first plane from this “convoy” yesterday, I want to take an updated look, as we have a lot more details…
Convoy of Russian government jets fly to Alaska
Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are expected to have a meeting today (Friday, August 15, 2025) in Anchorage, Alaska, at around 11AM local time. They’re supposed to talk about the Russia and Ukraine conflict, but given how short the meeting will be, it seems like the best case scenario is that there could be plans for a second meeting.
As you’d expect, this meeting involves a lot of logistics. Alaska is a convenient halfway point between Washington and Moscow, though since it’s on US soil, I imagine that Russian security forces are on high alert.
As a result, it’s not just Putin and his advisors flying in from Russia, but also all kinds of other government staff. On Thursday, August 14, 2025, we saw three Russian-built Ilyushin Il-96-300s belonging to the government’s fleet land at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport (ANC):
- The nine-year-old plane with the registration code RA-96023 operated from Moscow (VKO) as flight RSD381
- The 16-year-old plane with the registration code RA-96019 operated from Moscow (VKO) as flight RSD171
- The nine-year-old plane with the registration code RA-96022 operated from St. Petersburg (LED) as flight RSD411
All of those flights took roughly 10 hours. As you’d expect, the aircraft were over Russian airspace for most of the journey, flying over land and then over the East Siberian Sea, prior to crossing the Bering Sea and then entering United States airspace. Of course ordinarily, Russian registered aircraft couldn’t use United States airspace. However, there are special exceptions for these flights.
The two planes that came from Moscow ended up departing shortly after they landed, and returned to Russia. However, they headed for a closer airport — they flew to Petropavlovsk Kamchatsky (PKC), which is only roughly a four hour flight away.
I’m curious about the logic for that. Was the Russian government just not comfortable parking the planes in Anchorage for 24+ hours, and instead wants to keep the planes at one of the closer major Russian airports? Or were the planes only needed to drop people off, but not pick them up…?
As far as Putin goes, he’s believed to be on a six-year-old Tupolev Tu-214 with the registration code RA-64531, operating as flight RSD539. He’s only making the short journey from Magadan (GDX), and that plane is expected to land at Elmendorf Air Force Base (EDF), which is also where the meting is taking place. That’s only a 1,957-mile flight, so it should only take around four hours. After the meeting, he’s expected to depart immediately.
As noted by OMAAT reader Ross, the security protocols that will be used today are quite interesting, as reported by Bloomberg:
State Department protocol is shaping much of the plan. In a bilateral meeting, officials said, reciprocity rules mean every courtesy extended to one leader must be matched for the other. Russian security will control Putin’s immediate movements while the Secret Service maintains an outer ring.
Neither side will open the other’s doors or ride in the other’s vehicles. If 10 US agents are posted outside a meeting room, 10 Russian agents will stand on the other side. Everything is matched body for body, gun for gun, one person said.
That symmetry will extend from the arrival motorcade to the placement of translators in the room. Both sides will bring their own language teams.
Planes fly from Russia to the US with some frequency
While these are certainly the most high profile and widely publicized Russian flights landing in the United States in quite some time, the Russian government’s fleet of Ilyushin Il-96-300s actually make it to the country with some frequency. Every several months, we see one of these planes operate a triangle route from Moscow to New York to Washington and back to Moscow.
These special flights are possible in order to “cycle” Russian diplomats, since they can only be in the United States for so long. Perhaps an even more interesting flight was in March 2022, when a Russian government jet flew from St. Petersburg to Washington. That flight had a more exciting backstory, as its purpose was to pick up 12 expelled Russian intelligence operatives from the Russian Mission, who were accused of espionage.
As an avgeek, I can’t help but be fascinated by these flights. While I can’t personally vouch for how accurate this is, below is a video about what one of these government jets that’s frequently flown by Putin is actually like.
Bottom line
We’ve seen quite the convoy of Russian government jets flying to Alaska over the past 24 hours. Yesterday we saw three Russian government Ilyushin Il-96-300s land in Anchorage from Moscow and St. Petersburg. In a couple of hours, we shouls also see a Tupolev Tu-214 land in Anchorage, with Putin onboard.
Politics aside, as an aviation geek, I find these Ilyushin and Tupolev planes to be very cool, and I wish I could fly on one…
What do you make of these interesting Russian government jets?
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